A wild, wild ride in the District 5 race for supervisor

A sign in the window of Hobson’s Choice, a bar on Haight Street, reads, “The Torture Returns.”

Sure, it’s technically referring to the Giants’ nail-biting, come-from-behind entry into the World Series — but it might as well be about the race for that neighborhood’s supervisor, which seems to completely upturn every other day.

Like the Giants themselves — wait, Barry Zito is the savior of the pennant race and Tim Lincecum is relegated to a reliever — the cast of characters in the Nov. 6 race to lead District Five keeps morphing.

Before backing Olague, the progressives were behind their darling, challenger Julian Davis, before an alleged groping incident gave a whole new meaning to the term “hands-on politician.”

But rather than heed calls to drop out of the race from the Bay Guardian and others, Davis has carried on. His campaign team was even spotted delivering door hangers boasting of endorsements from the Guardian, Supervisor John Avalos and others — days after they’d withdrawn their endorsements.

His website has taken the withdrawn endorsements down and his campaign manager said no literature is currently coming out with withdrawn endorsements. But previously purchased ads were still all over the Guardian’s website in recent days — right next to editorials about why he’s no longer their choice.

London Breed, executive director of the African-American Arts and Culture Complex, was initially presumed to be the moderate choice of the Willie Brown crowd.

Throw in the five other lesser-known candidates and ranked choice voting — in which voters can rank their top three candidates to avoid a run-off — and it’s anybody’s guess how this wild ride will end.

One insider said if you asked a Magic 8 ball, the response would be “Reply hazy, try again.”

Interviews with people along Haight Street showed voters are far from decided even this close to the election. Tantek Celik, who works in web standards for Mozilla, was sipping a cup of Blue Bottle coffee at an outdoor table on a recent morning and said he’s annoyed with all of the candidates.

They’re filling his mailbox with too many mailers which he finds disrespectful in a neighborhood filled with environmentalists who like their trees.

“They’ve handed out more flyers than all the other flyers I’ve received put together — the ballot measures, school board, state measures,” he said. “It’s turned me off…It comes off as a sense of desperation.”

He’s started keeping a tally of how many mailers he gets from each candidate and said he’s likely to research candidates to vote for starting from the bottom of the list. John Rizzo an activist with the Sierra Club may have secured his vote since he’s only received one Rizzo mailer.

Jason Wright, a waiter, was smoking a cigarette on the street and said, he too, will vote for a lesser known candidate.

“That chick — Thea, Tea, whatever her name is,” he said, referring oh-so-respectfully to Thea Selby, founder of the Lower Haight Merchant and Neighbor Association. “I like the fact that she actually is out going door to door meeting people in the district.”

He said he’s heard about some of the debates in which the candidates have gotten “all up in each other’s face.” (Olague even walked out of one.)

“It’s really sad, but it’s sort of amusing,” he said, describing San Francisco politics to a T.

Most City Hall watchers predict Olague and Breed will come out on top in the first round of vote counting, though some say a dark horse candidate could benefit from ranked choice voting. But an incumbent has never lost a ranked choice competition in San Francisco so in that sense it’s Olague’s to lose.

Tami Bryant, a Western Addition resident who avidly supported Mirkarimi’s reinstatement, said she would have backed Olague anyway but likes her even more since the Mirkarimi vote.

“It’s been a chaotic race to say the least,” she said. “I think it’s going to be close and I think it’ll be a hard fight, but I really believe she would be the best for our district.”

Ted Loewenberg, president of the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association, is volunteering on Breed’s campaign.

“She’s experienced, she’s capable, she’s savvy, she’s ethical, she’s effective,” he said. “I can’t think of a positive adjective that you could mention about a person and not apply it to London.”

How about f-bomb free?

Political consultant Jim Ross, who is running challenger David Lee’s campaign against Supervisor Eric Mar n District 1, joked that his race is getting completely overshadowed.

“It started out where District 1 was going to be the hot race is San Francisco,” he said. “But no. District 5 had to figure out a way to become more interesting.”